This he defined elsewhere as “Atheism in domino.” Since Disraeli’s death the German school has made further strides. There has been a brisk export of fresh theories “made in Germany.” We are now told that the Old Testament is Babylonian, and that the New springs out of Aryan ideas; and side by side with this tour-de-force of paradox, an orgy of anarchical hysteria threatens the sanctions of authority, the secular as well as the spiritual. Disraeli would probably meet it by what he retorted in the ’sixties, that when the periodical deluge subsides, the ark is seen resting at the summit of the mountain.
But if education was to be secularised, might not the ark be chopped up for firewood? Education was a problem that, in its private and public aspects, engrossed Disraeli from his youth. In the second of two election addresses at High Wycombe in the memorable year 1832 he had announced: “... By repealing the taxes upon knowledge, I would throw the education of the people into the hands of the philosophic student, instead of the ignorant adventurer.” He believed that its current principles were constantly wrong—that words were taught instead of ideas, and grammar studied instead of character; and he was also a great advocate of the wisdom of steeping the youth of a nation in national literature. It was a keen disappointment to him that he was deprived of the occasion of settling—partially, at any rate—the problem of national education, and he considered that the less it was fettered by direct State interference and the more it was helped by State support, the better. He was persuaded that any national system ought to be religious. For the Church’s original training of the people, for her alliance with the Universities, too, he had the keenest admiration.
“Nothing is more surprising to me,” he urged in 1872, “than ... that in the nineteenth century the charge against the Church of England should be that Churchmen, and especially the clergy, had educated the people.... I think the greatest distinction of the clergy is the admirable manner in which they have devoted their lives and fortunes to this greatest of national objects.”[104]
It may not be generally remembered that only two years after Disraeli entered the House of Commons he delivered himself of a remarkable speech in this connection. He was opposed, he said, at that time to a strictly State system, for he was opposed to “paternal government, which stamped out the sense of independence in man, and caused him to rely upon others.” Society should be strong, and the State weak; order should not be disturbed by national injustice, nor liberty by popular outcry. “It is always the State and never Society—always machinery and never sympathy.” But though he did not change the principles of his outlook, he came by experience very materially to change his view of the machinery by which they were to be applied. He detested the interferences of centralisation; but a doubled population and the overgrowth of cities rendered State measures imperative, and their absence a disgrace. In his Edinburgh speech, twenty-eight years later, he thus handled this national need: “... Ever since I have been in public life I have done everything I possibly could to promote the cause of the education of the people generally. I have done so because I always felt that with the limited population of this United Kingdom, compared with the great imperial position which it occupies with reference to other nations, it is not only our duty, but ... an absolute necessity, that we should study to make every man the most effective being that education can possibly constitute him. In the old wars there used to be a story that one Englishman could beat three members of some other nation. But I think if we want to maintain our power, we ought to make one Englishman equal really in the business of life to three other men that any other nation can furnish. I do not see otherwise how ... we can fulfil the great destiny that I believe awaits us, and the great position we occupy.”
It will be noticed that he forecasts the practical and technical requirements which, at a period of comparative commercial decline, we are only now beginning to take to heart.
“Therefore,” he resumed, “so far as I am concerned, whether it be a far greater advanced system of primary education—whether it be that system of competitive examination which I have ever supported, though I am not unconscious of some pedantry with which it is associated—or whatever may be the circumstances, I shall ever be its supporter.”
He kept his word. Leading the Opposition in 1870, he supported Mr. Forster’s great measure, though he strongly opposed the Cowper-Temple Amendment—one which has undoubtedly kept much religious acrimony alive. His speech on these clauses can still be studied with advantage. In 1854, Lord John Russell introduced his bill for the “good government of the University of Oxford.” Here, again, Disraeli objected to undue Government interference. He thought that this “great seat of learning” should deal with these problems itself independently, and in the spirit of the age. It was designed to create professors on the Prussian model. Disraeli showed that in Prussia there was then small “sphere for the genius, the intellect, the talent, and the energy of Germany, except in the professorial chair.” There were not then great opportunities for a public career in Germany. “In this country you may increase the salaries as you please; but to suppose that you can produce a class of men like the German professors is chimerical.... We are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it that, however you may increase the rewards of professors ... ambition in England will look to public life.... You will not be able, however you think you may, to lay your hand upon twenty-five or thirty professors suddenly, capable of effecting a great influence on the youth of England. You cannot get these men at once. It will be slowly, with great difficulty, by fostering and cultivating your resources, that you will be able to produce one of these great professors—a man able to influence the public opinion of the University. Whether, then, you look to the great change which you propose with respect to these private halls, which is in fact a revolution of the collegiate system; or whether you look to the great alteration you contemplate by the revival of the professorial instead of the tutorial system—on both points you will meet, I think, with disappointment.... If I were asked, ‘Would you have Oxford, with its self-government, freedom, independence, but yet with its anomalies and imperfections; or would you have the University free from those anomalies and imperfections and under control of the Government?’ I would say, ‘Give me Oxford free and independent, with its anomalies and imperfections.’”[105]
In the discipline of the Church itself also Disraeli eventually found it imperative for the State to interfere. With extreme Ritualism, with amateur popery in an alien camp, effetely and sometimes treacherously practised, till the insubordination of a few, who were not in any sense strong men or leaders, began to infect the many, Disraeli could not sympathise. The Mass of the Roman Church as a solemn act he could reverence, but not the “masquerade” of amateur ultramontanes. With the High Anglicans, with the Tractarians, he in many respects sympathised profoundly. Their movements were those of noble aspiration and high endeavour. But most of the ultra-Ritualists were of wholly different calibre. Their attitude he typified most humorously in Lothair, and in the person of the “Reverend Dionysius Smylie,” who was wont to observe, “Rome will come to me.” Moreover, the Church had passed rapidly through varying vicissitudes. In the late ’thirties and early ’forties there had been a signal revival; but the secession of Newman, “apologised for but never explained,” had proved a blow under which “the Church still reels.” She lost a great, a generous, a necessary leader, when a leader was her need. “If,” Disraeli wrote in 1870, “a quarter of a century ago, there had arisen a Churchman equal to the occasion, the position of ecclesiastical affairs in this country would have been very different from that which they now occupy. But these great matters fell into the hands of monks and Schoolmen....”
In the ’fifties there was some degeneration, and the revival of Convocation was not on the wider basis which might have quickened clerical energy and lay enthusiasm. In the ’sixties the Church began to be “in danger.” Radicalism and Ritualism united; and there is a manuscript letter of Disraeli, still extant, written at this period, and affording some very interesting and secret knowledge.
What Disraeli disliked and regretted was that the choice between faith and free thought should be more and more presented as one between the Roman purple and the “Red Republic.”